


I Got Your Back

by nanianela



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, GotDamb this is some Cheesy Shit, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanianela/pseuds/nanianela
Summary: Late at night, Keith comes into Lance's room to help him clean and dress a wound on his back that he can't reach. Keith makes Lance promise not to tell anyone that he's been pushing himself too hard while training and practicing with forbidden high levels. Lance decides to stay the night with Keith in his bed, just in case he needs somethingpurely medicalin the middle of the night. No smut, just fluff! Oneshot.





	I Got Your Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babeofwrath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babeofwrath/gifts), [tclowe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tclowe/gifts).



> This is my first try at writing the Klance pairing! I hope that you like it!  
> I've taken the base idea from an old fic of mine and repurposed it, I just really like hurt/comfort and of course sharing a bed ;)

Keith hid his face away in his elbow, his arm pressed up against the smooth tiles as hot water beat down on him, steam billowing out into the air. He interlocked his teeth and let out a soft hiss between them, and he watched with his one uncovered eye through the growing white haze as rivulets of dark red stretched and swirled down the drain. Water swelled and dripped off of the tips of his black hair.

_How could I be blindsided by such a cheap trick_ , Keith berated himself, then shut his eyes and let nothing but the searing pain from the gash in his back fill his mind entirely, teaching him his lesson the hard way. These training levels were so high that they'd been completely locked to a paladin of his age and experience, but that wasn't something ten minutes, rapid (almost manic) typing, and a certain bespectacled hacker couldn't fix. He promised her that he'd be extra careful with this, and only advance to the next level when he was certain he could handle it. 

"Oh, I believe you." Pidge had said, finally poking her pointer finger down on the enter key after a little flourishing spin of the wrist. The level Keith was trying to advance to, which had had a frustrating red tint over the holographic slide, flickered for a moment and pixels skittered before it finally turned green. 

Both of their faces lit up.

"Nice! Piece of cake," Pidge shot him a toothy grin and ripped the cord back out of its port in the wall.

"It actually worked," Keith almost couldn't believe it, and he couldn't help but let his fingertips ghost against the screen. Yes, _hell_ yes, this was the one thing he'd wanted so badly this whole time.

He couldn't believe this was all because of such a simple mistake, the A.I. suddenly deciding to play dirty. Of course training this way was difficult, but that was kind of the point. He knew what he was signing himself up for. He was training hard and becoming a better at hand-to-hand each day, and that was proving to be a good thing— until today's stupid mistake, of course. 

Finally, Keith shut the water off and tried as hard as he could to regulate his heaving breathing. Now that the noise of the rushing water was gone, he couldn't risk it if someone heard his labored breaths and checked up on him. He swallowed and breathed evenly through his nose, working up to the idea that sooner or later, he was going to have to straighten up from his hunched position while he leaned with his arm propped to the wall, and that movement was going to hurt like hell.

Crap, he had no idea what he was going to do about this now. The wound was a diagonal slash across the upper half of his back, right between the shoulder blades, and he couldn't reach it himself no matter how hard he tried.

If only it wasn't the one spot on his body that he couldn't reach on his own! It seemed that he was going to need to ask someone else... _for help_. He shuddered slightly, both from the idea and from the absence of the hot water. That idea was about a hundred times worse than the actual wound itself. 

He roughly dressed the laceration in his room, packing it with a few napkins he'd stolen from the kitchen, and he tied two long socks together and knotted them over his chest, tight. The pressure hurt, but he knew it would help keep in more of the bleeding. He'd have to do just enough so that blood wouldn't seep through and stain any of his clothing, but that was sort of hard when he was living on a alien spaceship and there wasn't the typical conveniences. Well, if there was one thing he learned living in the desert, is that anything can be useful if you just think about it a little differently.

He eased into his tee shirt painstakingly slowly, finally draping his red coat over everything, but he didn't tuck his arms through the sleeves, so it hung like a sort of cape off of his shoulders.

He gripped the coat to himself, fisting the two sides together over his chest. Those odd lumps from the knotted socks would be too suspicious. He looked down at the floor and let out a short but deep puff of pent-up breath, just to try and get rid of some of the nerves. 

_Now or never_ , he told himself, letting his eyes slide shut briefly with his head bowed.

He could do this.

Keith knocked sharply twice. He could barely make out some muffled, upbeat music playing from behind the door. He felt jittery waiting out in the hall, if anyone else were to come across him they would know just looking at him how much pain he was in. He stared down the door, willing it to open.

The music continued to bump, and Keith figured Lance didn't hear the first knock. With a sharp intake of breath, Keith let a pad on the right scan his hand and he nudged opened the door. 

"Um... Lance?" He hung just outside the bedroom, his hand still keeping contact on the barely opened door, a dejected slump in his shoulders. 

Keith caught a glimpse of Lance, feet propped up to his bed with his hands planted on the floor, in the middle of a push-up, using a form that pitched most of his weight forward.

"Oh-!" Lance's eyes flew wide as they met Keith's, his feet pushed off the bed and he scrambled and twisted his torso to stand up straight, his cheeks already glowing a little pinker. He slammed a button to shut the music off, and he planted his hands on his hips, mainly because he didn't know what else to do with them. "What's, uhhh, what's crackin'?" 

"I..." Keith was still hovering by the doorway, as if he were ready to turn on his heel and leave any second. He clutched his red and black jacket a little closer with his fist over his chest. His hunched posture was like an old grandmother's. "Can I come in?" 

"Uh- yeah! Ehemm. I mean, yeah, sure,  _whatever_." Lance flopped down on his bed upside down, placing his hands behind his head and his long brown hair hung downwards, elbows sticking out in triangles. He crossed his socked ankles far up on the wall. 

"Gotta, y'know, get these arms all beefed up for the ladies. Be like, hey, wanna see some  _weapons?_ Well, welcome to the gun show! **Bam!** " Lance took one hand off the back of his head and flexed, then kissed the barely-there bump on his bicep with a smack. "Well, they're getting there. Maybe? I'm more of a "squirt gun" kinda guy right now."

Keith came up to the bedside, his face tight in a pained grimace when he peered down at Lance's upside-down face. Lance's flippant and joking demeanor changed immediately. He twisted around and shot up, standing directly in front of Keith with concern pinching his eyebrows together. "Whoa, hey... Keith... what's wrong?" 

"I know you're good with hygiene. I thought you'd be the one out of the team to have the best first aid kit." Keith said quietly, and found himself bowing his head and looking to the ground again, holding his elbow with one arm barred across his stomach. His hair fell over his eyes, but that was a good thing. He didn't want Lance to see just how much pain he was in.

Lance swallowed his next words and instead lightly placed his palm on the small of Keith's back. Keith felt a warm glow on his cheeks and a slight fluttering in his tummy. 

"We should get you to the healing pod." Lance's tone had changed to be low and serious, he cleared his throat and then his hand was gone once again, leaving a sudden coldness in its absence. Keith wished that it would come back. "I'll help take you there. You look-- no offense, _really_ bad. Like you're gonna pass out or something." 

"No," Keith grumbled quietly, still hanging his head. "Pidge hacked into the software in the training deck and unlocked forbidden levels for me. If anyone else finds out I'm doing this, they'll make me stop. You might not understand. But I... I _have_ to keep training like this."   

Lance's brows furrowed and his lips pressed into a conflicted frown. Keith swayed on his feet, and Lance quickly steadied him with a hand to his shoulder and guided him to sit down at the edge of his bed, then he joined him with one ankle propped up on his knee, his lengthy leg folded into a V.

"Look at me." Lance finally said, his voice hardened, hand squeezing in a gentle pulse on Keith's shoulder.

It took a second of lag and yet another reassuring squeeze of Lance's hand on his shoulder, but finally Keith gave in and lifted his chin to look at Lance, frowning and still hunched over in the way that hurt the least. He swallowed back that tight feeling in the back of his throat. They were sitting so close, their outer thighs were almost touching.

Lance's hand slid from his shoulder to gently cup the nape of his neck, and Keith felt a soft warmth erupt in his stomach at the brush of his fingers, resting there so warm on the back of his neck in such an intimate gesture. Keith swallowed, but tried hard not to make it obvious, and met Lance's blue eyes, the flutter stirring even more deep in his stomach at the way his teammate was looking at him in concern. With a look like he cared, _really_ cared.

"It's not worth hiding this. And if we told the others... they'd totally understand. I promise." Lance's eyelids drooped lower in concern. His thumb briefly swiped at the back of his neck before it withdrew, and rested on his own ankle over his knee. Keith could feel his cheeks beginning to burn with warmth, he could still feel the ghost of Lance's touch on the nape of his neck.

"Lance... please." Keith nearly whispered. His eyebrows pinched together just enough for a small fold to form between them, his intense gaze drove hard into Lance's eyes. He spoke like each word was being measured slowly and carefully on his tongue. "I made a mistake. I promise it won't happen again. I can't... let them take this away from me."

Lance's blue eyes flicked down and back up, like if he scanned him once he'd be able to somehow use that to make his decision. He worried his bottom lip for a second, contemplating.

"This is about finding Shiro, isn't it," He asked softly. Keith instantly pressed his lips into an unhappy line and nodded, just once, his eyes still boring deeply into Lance's. 

"Fine." Lance finally agreed, slipping his ankle off of his knee and letting both feet hit the floor with a soft thump. "Then just sit tight for now." He jumped up and began to rummage through his storage, squatting down and biting down on his lip to hide his smile as he tossed clothes out to land in clumps behind him.

"You know, you came to _juuust_ the right guy." Lance spoke into the storage unit, reaching even further in until he'd practically crawled all the way into it. "I know it's in here, somewhere... aha!"

"Tadaa~!" Lance popped back out enthusiastically and lifted up the white cover with the red plus to reveal his fully stocked first aid kit, holding it from the bottom with one hand and displaying it to Keith like how a chef holds a gourmet dish.

Every compartment was organized perfectly and brimming with supplies. A miniature brown hydrogen peroxide bottle, puffy white squares of gauze, a thermometer, a stack of band-aids in their paper shells held neatly together with a thin rubber band with their edges all lined up, a white circle with a fat ring of athletic tape on it, a pair of mini scissors. It was almost _cute_ : it somehow resembled a large and expensive bento box.  

Keith let the red jacket slip down to puddle behind him, he very painstakingly lifted off his tee, and he fumbled with his chest and undid the knot. Then he turned around and unwound the socks slowly, wincing. There were splotches of red beginning to bleed through the stacked napkins already.

" _Meirda_..." Lance hesitated to reach up and peel away the napkins. His face had gotten a little paler already. "Is it deep?" 

"It's not too bad," Keith's voice was strained, and he gritted his teeth. It hurt to feel the skin sticking to the napkin when Lance peeled it away. 

"Ohh, okay, yeah, so, that's funny that you'd say that, because uhhh, this is _really_ deep." Lance's voice rose in pitch and quivered a little. "Like I can almost see your bon- _ohhh man_. The pod option is looking better and better every minute."

" _No_ ," Keith snatched up his wrist with a crushing grip, and his narrowed and intense eyes pierced into Lance's. "I'm not going. You said you would help me, so- don't go back on your word!" Keith snapped, he couldn't hold back the quick flare of anger when it hurt so badly like this. His fingers dug in deep to the sinews just under Lance's wrist, this pain was putting him majorly on edge. 

"Okay, okay. I never said I was going to! Cool your jets, and just let me get another look." Lance spoke in a soothing voice, and Keith let go of his wrist, huffing. He instantly felt a pang of guilt when he saw that his grip had nearly punctured into the skin, his nails had left reddened crescents along the skin. Lance noticed him looking and turned his arm over, quickly hiding the nail marks from view.

"Turn around again so I can see." Lance said, and the instant that Keith had turned his back, Lance's stoic expression crumpled and he rubbed at the marks on the skin, mouthing a dramatic but completely silent _OW!_

Keith could feel Lance's eyes on him, and he barely waited even a few seconds before clearing his throat and speaking up. "Well?" Keith demanded brusquely, curling both fists into the sheets on either side of his hips. He gripped onto them so hard his balled hands trembled. 

"I think I'll need to, you know. Eh- _hrmm_. Sew it up." Lance swallowed nervously. "...We could always just say the two of us were goofing around on the training deck or someth-"

" _Lance._ " 

"Okay, _okay,_  can't blame a guy for _checking_." Lance unscrewed and shook out a few round pills into his hand, double-checked the label with a squint, then let two more tumble into his palm. "Here, knock these back. It won't kick in fast enough, but it'll help you get to sleep after. Hopefully." 

Keith gathered as much saliva into his mouth as he could, then tossed them back and dry swallowed as he heard the soft, single glug of a bottle as Lance covered the opening of the peroxide bottle with a cotton ball and tipped it over and back, then he dabbed at the slash. Lance could feel it bubbling and tickling underneath his fingernails, and he didn't even want to imagine how it felt for Keith as white foam fizzled thickly out from the red. 

Keith was completely silent, taking it without so much as a whimper, but his balled fists trembled on. 

"You....uhm, you okay?" Lance finally piped up after a second, after he'd finished and placed the red stained cotton ball onto his desk, the impressions from his fingers creating two flat edges that met into a peak. 

Keith said nothing through his interlocked teeth, just bobbed his head in a single affirming nod. Lance tried to hide the fact that is own long, tan fingers were quaking, too. He took the tube of Neosporin and squeezed out a lone line of the translucent ointment onto his fingers, rolling it around to make it warm and spreadable. 

"Some A.I. this ship's got, huh?" Lance asked sympathetically.  

"Uh-huh," Keith kept his head bowed as Lance carefully spread the antibiotic diagonally down along his back.

"Now." Lance's voice clearly wobbled now. "I've only done this to Mamá's Thanksgiving turkey before..." 

Keith twisted as little as he possibly could to look over his shoulder, and saw a very pale-faced Lance with a threaded needle, pointed up at the ceiling and it quivered from where it was pinched between his thumb and pointer. His eyes were wide and uncertain, his hair was mussed from how many times he'd pushed his overgrown brown bangs nervously out of his eyes, and suddenly he looked a lot younger than he usually did. 

"You call yourself the tailor, don't you?" Keith joked weakly, and turned back around. "-So get sewing." 

Keith let himself make a big, ugly grimace at the very first slide of the needle, at the expected slide and tug, then let every muscle in his face relax as he let his lungs deflate completely in one big rush. 

"Hey, so, you're still okay, right?" Lance knew by now that he shouldn't interrupt his work, and Keith felt every tug, slide and pinch as Lance worked as quickly as possible. 

" _How about_ I tell you if I'm not," Keith snapped, and a soft groan accidentally slipped out like he'd feared it would when he opened his mouth. Lance stilled immediately, and wrapped his hand around the meat of Keith's neck from behind. Keith let out a gigantic sigh once again, and rapidly batted his eyes to will away the incoming tears, recognizable from the prickly rush up his nostrils. 

"For Shiro." Lance said very seriously, squeezing down hard.

"Yeah," Keith agreed, his voice tight. "For Shiro." 

Lance worked quickly, Keith knew just by the way it felt, the rhythmic pinch and tug that Lance's stitches were all going to turn out perfectly even: both in length and evenly spaced. He was planning on somehow straining his neck to inspect them in the bathroom mirror later, but now he was thinking that he wouldn't actually need to.

"Okay. Last one." Lance announced, and Keith let out a sigh of relief as he felt the very last pinch, slide, and tug before it stilled, and Lance tied it off. Lance carefully rolled the gauze down the length of the cut, finally covering up the angry red with clean white. His fingers, still a little oily from the antibiotic, dragged gently down the smooth, tan skin by his spine, and Keith shuddered. Lance must not have done that on purpose, right?

The feather-light press of fluffy gauze almost tickled when Lance lined up each square, and Keith felt the stickiness as the athletic tape was stuck into place, Lance ripping and tearing each strand off of the roll with his teeth. Keith watched him work, his eyes a bit glassy. Lance held the roll up to his mouth and met Keith's eyes, ripping another piece of tape with his pointy canine off with a loud, long rip.

"You're one tough cookie, Kogane." Lance tried hard to suppress his smirk when he rubbed the last strip of tape onto the skin. Lance placed everything back in its place in the first aid kit, avoiding Keith's eyes. 

"Well. Cool." Keith tried to rise, pressing back against the bed with his palms. "I guess I'll-" Lance's hand instantly shot out and clamped down on his bicep.

"Nuh-uh, nooo n-n-no, you're not going anywhere." Lance shut the kit with a quiet click. "I don't know how you even did that without passing out. But you're not about to make the walk all the way back to your room!"

"You could... help me there?" Keith suggested weakly. He knew that Lance was right, the thought of moving was sort of making him a little queasy. Pain he could manage, but blood flow was another thing outside of his control. He wasn't sure how well he'd stay conscious if he got up and tried to make that trek now. 

"Look, you can take my bed for tonight. I'll just take yours." Lance helped to slowly lower him onto his stomach, careful not to move him too much so the cut wouldn't re-open, and he pulled the blanket up over his bare back up to his shoulders. Keith sighed contently, his eyes fluttering closed. 

"Yeah, well, uh... sleep tight." Lance said, awkwardly standing there. He hiked his thumb over his shoulder. "I'll just, head over to your room now." 

"Wait!" Keith's eyes snapped open again. How could he forget? He kept the Blade of Marmora under his pillow and slept with it there every night like some kind of messed up Teddy Bear, if Lance ever found that out he would never live it down. Keeping that a secret was worth anything else he'd have to do to stop Lance from sleeping in his bed.

Their eyes slid to meet, and they both realized they were thinking the same thing.

"Oh." The word fell out of Lance's mouth when he stood there with his arms hanging limply at his sides in disbelief, he'd had zero intention of actually saying anything aloud.

"Just-" Keith's eyes were drooping closed already, partly from exhaustion but mostly from shyness.

Lance looked back toward his occupied bed- Keith looked peaceful, dozing off there on his stomach. The blankets had managed to slip down and a bit of his white bandaging was showing over the hem. It wouldn't be right for Lance to leave Keith alone in this condition, right? What if he needed something in the middle of the night, like a glass of water or more painkillers or something?

" _Fine_. But only 'cuz I don't want you getting up and risking tearing those stitches open, okay?" Lance came back to the bed and folded over the corner blanket to slip under it. "So wake me up if you need something-uh, something medical." 

Keith just hummed softly in acknowledgement, and rested his cheek on the back of his hand. For a moment, the fabric of the blankets rustling was the only sound to fill the silence. Lance flicked off the light, and the two of them were plunged into darkness. There was more shuffling around, as Lance went onto his side. Keith wondered if he was facing the wall, or facing him. And selfishly, he really, really hoped it was the latter. 

"G'night, Keith." Lance said quietly into the darkness, and just from where his voice was coming, Keith got his answer about which direction he was facing. He let a large smile stretch across his lips in the dark, because he knew no one could see it.  

"Night, Lance."  


End file.
